Good ways to make Gold? What to sell, what to salvage?

I Have noticed that I have been playing this game for quite some time and still I am clueless as to how to make money properly. I hear people boasting about having millions of golds and not knowing what to do with it all and I realize I am lucky if I have over 10 platinum. So now that I am on a Quest to get my Warrior some Primeval Armor I have to ask okay what am I doing wrong that I never have any Gold? I never know what items are valuble to players, what items I should savage or where I should go to look for expensive items. Or maybe I am doing everything wrong. What can I do to learn or what should i be doing different.

Here are some general rules that I stick to. Other people may disagree, but they have served me well in the past.

1. Pick up everything. Try to keep your inventory bags empty of clutter (armor, dyes, etc.) so that you have more room for drops.

2. Trading with other players is seldom advantageous. There are only a small handful of items that will be worth the trouble of selling. If you get a green or rare gold, throw it in storage and look it up somewhere (the price check forum would be ideal). If it is not listed at more than a few platinum, I just sell to the merchant and move on.

3. Always check the rune trader before selling your armor drops. Radiant/Survivor/etc. are more common than you think, and salvaging them adds up over time.

4. Make a distinction between what is a necessity and what is an extravagance. For example, opening chests does not function as a means of income. It is for people trying to build their titles. Elite tomes are not for the GW poor either; you are much better off spending only 1k on a signet.

Beyond that, it boils down to how much time you spend playing. People who log 4+ hours per day are bound to have more gold than casuals do. You can also look into solo farming, but that's a topic for another thread. Check the farming forum for more information.

October Jade has given good advice. To go just a few steps beyond that also identify most of what you sell to the merchants/trader -- white items, runes, and mods will all increase in value if they are ID'd before being sold.

And yes, that means ID the armor, remove the rune, ID the rune -- not much worth it for light blue ones, but gold runes can increase more than 100gp from identification, and majors generally increase to the 35-75gp range. Considering that it only costs a couple gold to use the ID kit it is well worth it. You'll see a difference.

As far as knowing what to sell and what to salvage there are a couple of good ways to learn. One is to check the price check forums here like Jade suggested. Another is to hang out in a busy merching city and read the trade text to see what is being sold. Those are the items that you'll want to salvage. Fortitude mods that give +29 or +30 health you'll want to take the time to sell and there are several inscriptions that are worth a good amount.

I find it very easy to make money by just playing without ever solo farming. Not that I have millions or anything, but enough for a few sets of 15k and some nicely skinned weapons.

Good luck to you.

Aye

QFT. I can't believe how many people never bother to pick up junk drops. It takes no time at all and very little time spent at the merchant back in town. You'd be surprised how much money I make on FOW pug runs off other people's drops.

A typical scenario:
We warp into FOW.
Clear the shadow army and accept quest reward from Rastigan.
Team decides to head on over to the forge.
On the way, we run into the skeleton army and kill a bunch of them.
Someone spots a chest over near the Dragon.
We take the unhholy text quest and go kill the Dragon and Priest.
Get chest.
Complain about lousy chest loot.
Resume our trek to the forge.
Clear the forge and accept the "cleansing the forge quest".
Head on over to the spider cave and complete the forge quest.
Return to forgemaster to get rewards.
2 or 3 people decide that's it for them and leave.
Remaining folks decide it's hopeless since our only Tank and bonder just left.
1 by 1 folks say goodbye and map back to town.
I backtrack over the forge, skeleton plain, spider cave and shadow army sites and pick up lots and lots of glittering dust, white weapons and occasionally a shard. I typically get 1-2k from the leftovers.